Saturday, May 13, 2006

Questions Raised for Phone Giants in Spy Data Furor - New York Times: "Civil liberties lawyers were quick to dispute that claim.'This is an incredible red herring,' said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group that has sued AT&T over its cooperation with the government, including access to calling records. 'There is no legal process that contemplates getting entire databases of data.'

The group sued AT&T in late January, contending that the company was violating the law by giving the government access to its customer call record data and permitting the agency to tap its Internet network. The suit followed reports in The New York Times in December that telecommunications companies had cooperated with such government requests without warrants."

This issue is huge. We saw the beginnings of it all with John Ashcroft. I think this Bankston would be an interesting person to have Meet The Bloggers.